Charts in the Wild! U.S. Presidential Election Edition
Right now, it’s challenging to keep up with world events. This morning, I saw several very serious headlines–tensions are escalating in the Middle East, U.S. dockworkers are on strike for a second day, and catastrophic flooding in Asheville caused massive damage and devastation. The amount of suffering — and news coverage — is overwhelming.
Data visualization helps us make sense of complexity, see things differently, or appreciate a topic from a different perspective, especially during these unpredictable times.
Many charts and graphs about next month’s U.S. Presidential election have been published, and one might be tempted to ignore them. Most Americans know how they will vote, considering how stable the polling numbers have been for weeks. Regardless, there are some insights to be gleaned about the political climate of the country and about chart-making.
The Electoral College is anathema to democracy.
This stacked bar chart from Axios Visuals, published in mid-August, shows Trump campaign TV ad spending and makes clear the enduring importance of the archaic Electoral College. In August, about 40% of the campaign’s total tv ad spend went to ads airing in Pennsylvania and Georgia and about 60% to “other states.” I initially found the chart slightly confusing. I needed to read the accompanying text to understand why only Pennsylvania and Georgia were included in the September and October stacked bars. The Trump campaign only purchased future TV advertising in those states. “The Trump campaign’s planned TV spending in Georgia doubled from 21% in August to 43% in September and 46% in October,” Axios said.
Kamala Harris’s candidacy changed the race.
The Upshot, a New York Times newsletter I’m subscribed to, summed up the huge change in enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket with diverging bar charts showing new voter registrations in the swing states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The annotations highlighting key events such as the week of the Republican National Convention and the week Biden dropped out of the race make these charts super easy to read, super fast.
Chartr’s graph showing donations to ActBlue since January underscores the magnitude of the shift in sentiment following Biden’s withdrawal from the race quite effectively. I don’t love the gradient background behind the annotation, but Instagram is a new medium for the (still relatively new) field of dataviz. It’s challenging to design eye-catching and effective visuals for a square on a tiny screen!
Statista’s line graph of the results of a YouGov poll, also plucked from Instagram, provides a third piece of evidence that the race doesn’t just feel different, it was fundamentally changed.
Interactive charts provide even deeper insight. They’re also fun.
I watched probably half of the Democratic National Convention, and I love the way the New York Times visualized the pundits’ opinions of how the first night helped–or hurt–the Harris campaign. You hover over a head and get a quote from the person whose body it belongs to.
Have you seen any election-related charts you really loved or hated? Or any that you found exceptionally insightful? Send them my way!
Finally, please make a plan to vote, if you haven’t already. The election is just 34 days from today. Michelle Frayman made this super handy and helpful guide to voter registration around the country with data collected by Brittany Rosenau.
